The trail leading down from the rift rim into the valley of Province Seven wound through a forest of mountain pine and blossoming wild pear trees.
Everywhere they walked, the physical reality of the land-wide reboot was evident. Springs that had been dry for twelve ages were bubbling up through cracks in the old stone road, washing away decades of piled up dust. Terraced hillsides that had produced only stunted, bitter sorghum were now choked with wild legumes and thick, succulent mountain grasses.
A mile down the trail, they came upon a small farming hamlet consisting of thirty low stone cottages thatched with dried reeds.
In the center of the village, surrounded by ancient stone threshing floors, fifty mortal townspeople were gathered in total, scared silence. They were dressed in patched hemp tunics and coarse woolen trousers, their faces weathered and leathered by a lifetime of brutal quarry labor and drought.
At the head of the crowd knelt an elderly man with a long, wispy white beard, wearing the faded bronze medallion of a village headman.
The old man was trembling wildly. His forehead was pressed against the wet cobblestones in front of a stone irrigation water tank that was gushing crystal-clear water onto the dirt road.
